Non-Invasive Metabolic Imaging

Directly detecting chemistry response in vivo mapped over tumors is a powerful mechanism to detect effects of (chemo) therapy at a much earlier stage compared to observing morphology. Moreover, it is less invasive and less prone to sampling errors when compared to ex-vivo procedures requiring biopsies. The metabolic imaging technology can therefore be effective in treatment guidance for many tumor sites. The two technically most demanding tumor sites were selected for the proposed study; the results can be used to assess an effect size for predicting efficacy of immunotherapy in lung tumors, and chemotherapy in pancreatic cancer. Ineffective immunotherapy (about 50% of treatments) could be timely stopped, saving high costs (about 80.000 Euros per treatment versus less than 500 Euros for a metabolic MRI) and preventing potential severe side effects, while knowledge of insufficient chemotherapy response can prevent surgery and potential toxic side effects.

Metabolic MRI is in line with recent innovation investments by Philips (collaborator with UMCU and part of the users committee) using 7 tesla technology, in line with CE approval of metabolic MRI by Siemens and commitment of GE in enabling metabolic MRI, and in line following an earlier NWO-groot funded prototype called META-scan (PI: Klomp). Futura is the partner that provides mechanical interfacing to the MRI. The second partner TeslaDC (SME) will develop the scan software plug-in to generate quantified metabolic maps, and the third partner Wavetronica (SME) will provide an RF hardware patch to enable a 31P MRI upgrade to the installed base.